Clear, Real-World Examples of Chicago Style Page Formatting

Let’s start with a mental snapshot before we zoom in on specific examples of Chicago style page formatting. Imagine you open a student paper formatted in Chicago notes-and-bibliography style. Here’s how that first page of text would look on the screen:

• The font is Times New Roman, 12-point.
• Margins are 1 inch on all sides.
• The whole document is double-spaced, including block quotes and notes (unless an instructor says otherwise).
• The first page of the main text does not repeat the title at the top (that belongs on the separate title page).
• The first line of each paragraph is indented half an inch.
• The page number sits in the top-right header, starting on the first page of the main text.

That’s the baseline. Now let’s walk through more concrete examples of examples of Chicago style page formatting, from the title page to the bibliography.

Example of a Chicago-Style Title Page (Student Paper)

Chicago style usually prefers a separate title page for student work, especially in the humanities. Here’s an example of how that page is laid out for a history research paper:

• Everything is double-spaced.
• The title is centered about one-third down the page.
• The subtitle (if any) is on the next line, also centered.
• Your name appears centered a few lines below the title.
• Course information, instructor name, and date sit near the bottom, also centered.

Imagine this as a real example of Chicago style page formatting for a title page:

Centered, about one-third down the page:
Industrial Labor and Urban Change
in Chicago, 1890–1920

(two or three double-spaced lines down)
Jordan M. Carter

(move to the bottom third of the page)
HIST 322: American Urban History
Professor Angela Summers
University of Illinois at Chicago
April 10, 2025

There is no page number on this title page in many student-paper examples of Chicago style page formatting, but some instructors want numbering to start here as page 1. When in doubt, ask your professor or check your department guidelines.

For official guidance, the Chicago Manual of Style (17th ed.) student-friendly summary is available through many university writing centers, such as the University of Chicago’s own resources and Purdue OWL’s Chicago guide.

First Page of Text: One of the Best Examples of Clean Chicago Formatting

Turn the page. Now you’re on page 1 of the main text. Here’s an example of how that page should be formatted in a notes-and-bibliography paper:

• The page number “2” appears in the top-right corner (if the title page was page 1).
• The paper’s title appears centered at the top of the page, one double-spaced line above the first paragraph.
• There is no extra bold or underlining on the title unless your instructor requests it.
• The first paragraph begins with a half-inch indent.

A real example of the top of page 1 might look like this:

(Header, right-aligned)
2

(One-third to half an inch from the top margin)
Industrial Labor and Urban Change in Chicago, 1890–1920

(double space)
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Chicago became a magnet for industrial laborers from across the United States and Europe. The city’s rapid expansion reshaped not only its skyline but also the daily lives of working-class residents.[footnote 1]

The footnote number appears as a superscript after the punctuation. At the bottom of the page, you’ll see the corresponding footnote, formatted in 10- or 12-point font, single-spaced, with a blank line between notes.

Examples of Chicago Style Page Formatting for Footnotes and Endnotes

One of the best examples of Chicago’s personality is the way it handles notes. When people ask for examples of Chicago style page formatting, footnotes are often what they really want to see.

Here’s how a typical footnote might appear at the bottom of a page:

1. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 45.

Formatting details that matter:

• Notes are single-spaced internally, with a blank line between each note.
• The first line of each note is indented like a paragraph.
• The note number is regular (not superscript) in the note area.

If your instructor prefers endnotes, the formatting on the page changes slightly:

• There are no notes at the bottom of each page.
• Instead, all notes live together at the end of the chapter or at the end of the paper.
• The endnotes section starts on a new page with the heading Notes, centered at the top.

So one example of Chicago style page formatting for endnotes would be a 12-page essay where the twelfth page ends with the last paragraph, and page 13 is dedicated entirely to notes.

For more on the difference between notes and bibliography style versus author-date, many students find the Harvard Library Chicago guide especially clear.

Author-Date Papers: Examples Include Science and Social Science Layouts

If you’re in sociology, political science, or some STEM fields, you might be using Chicago author-date instead of notes-and-bibliography. The page formatting is similar, but the way citations appear on the page changes.

Here’s an example of a paragraph in an author-date paper:

Recent studies highlight the role of urban infrastructure in shaping public health outcomes (Smith 2023, 214–216). In cities like Chicago, early twentieth-century investments in sanitation significantly reduced mortality rates from infectious diseases (Johnson 2024).

On the page, notice what’s different compared with the earlier examples of Chicago style page formatting:

• There are no superscript numbers in the text.
• Citations appear in parentheses with author last name, year, and page number.
• The reference list at the end is titled References instead of Bibliography.

A reference page in author-date style might look like this:

References
Johnson, Carla. 2024. Sanitation and the City: Public Health in the Progressive Era. Boston: Beacon Press.
Smith, Daniel. 2023. “Urban Infrastructure and Health Disparities.” Journal of Urban Studies 58 (3): 199–225.

The page formatting rules still hold: 1-inch margins, double spacing, and hanging indents for each entry.

Real Examples of Section Headings in Chicago Style

Headings are one of the most confusing parts of Chicago formatting because the manual gives options rather than one strict template. Still, there are reliable examples of examples of Chicago style page formatting that you can follow.

Imagine a senior thesis in history. The student uses a three-level heading system:

• Level 1: Centered, headline-style capitalization, bold.
  Example: Chapter 2: The Rise of the Stockyards

• Level 2: Centered, headline-style capitalization, not bold.
  Example: Immigration and Labor Supply

• Level 3: Left-aligned, italic, sentence-style capitalization.
  Example: Changing recruitment strategies in the 1910s

On the page, these headings create clear visual signposts without breaking Chicago’s tone. Many of the best examples of Chicago style page formatting use headings sparingly but consistently, especially in longer works like theses and dissertations.

For a quick comparison of heading systems, the Purdue OWL Chicago headings page is worth bookmarking.

Block Quotations: A Classic Example of Chicago’s Visual Style

If you quote more than about 100 words of prose (or more than five lines, depending on your instructor), Chicago expects a block quotation. This is one of the clearest examples of Chicago style page formatting because it visibly breaks from the main text.

Picture this on the page:

As one historian notes, the city’s growth was both physical and psychological:  

    Chicago’s skyline did not simply rise; it erupted. For migrants arriving from rural communities, the city seemed to compress time and space. Streets stretched beyond sight, factories roared day and night, and the stockyards filled the air with a smell that was at once disgusting and oddly reassuring. It was the scent of work, of wages, of possibility.  

This sense of possibility, however, was unevenly distributed.

Formatting details:

• The entire block quote is indented from the left margin (usually half an inch).
• It is single-spaced or 1.15–1.5 spaced, depending on instructor preference, but often kept double-spaced for student papers.
• There are no quotation marks around the block itself.
• The parenthetical citation or footnote number comes after the final punctuation.

Seeing this in context is one of the most helpful real examples of Chicago style page formatting for students who are visual learners.

Bibliography Page: One of the Best Examples of Chicago Style Consistency

The bibliography (or references in author-date) is where formatting details really stand out. Here’s an example of a bibliography page for a notes-and-bibliography paper:

Bibliography

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.

Johnson, Carla. Sanitation and the City: Public Health in the Progressive Era. Boston: Beacon Press, 2024.

Smith, Daniel. “Urban Infrastructure and Health Disparities.” Journal of Urban Studies 58, no. 3 (2023): 199–225.

On the page, these examples of Chicago style page formatting share the same consistent features:

• The heading Bibliography is centered at the top of a new page.
• Entries are alphabetized by author last name.
• Each entry uses a hanging indent: the first line starts at the margin; subsequent lines are indented.
• The whole section is double-spaced, though some instructors allow single spacing within entries with a blank line between them.

If you’re working on a long research project, check your university’s writing or thesis guide. Many schools publish their own Chicago-based examples, like the University of Wisconsin–Madison Writing Center, which shows real examples of Chicago-style bibliographies.

2024–2025 Trends: Digital Sources and Updated Chicago Examples

In 2024 and 2025, the biggest shift in real examples of Chicago style page formatting isn’t the margins or fonts—it’s the types of sources students are citing and how those appear on the page.

A few trends you’ll see in current examples include:

• More citations for online journal articles with DOIs.
• Increased use of government and nonprofit websites, especially on topics like public health, climate, and policy.
• Greater emphasis on stable URLs (like DOIs or official .gov links) instead of long, messy tracking links.

Here’s an example of how a modern online journal article might appear in a bibliography:

Patel, Anika. “Climate Resilience in Midwestern Cities.” Journal of Environmental Policy 12, no. 4 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1234/jep.2024.5678.

And here’s a Chicago-style entry for a government report you might find on a site like CDC.gov:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Urban Air Quality and Respiratory Health. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2023. https://www.cdc.gov/air/.

On the page, these follow the same formatting rules as older print sources: hanging indent, double spacing, and consistent punctuation. The digital elements (DOI or URL) simply appear at the end.

Pulling It All Together: A Mini Walkthrough of a Full Chicago-Style Paper

To tie these examples together, imagine you’re flipping through a complete 15-page Chicago-style research paper. Here’s how the sequence of pages would look as a final, practical example of Chicago style page formatting:

• Title Page: Centered title and student information, double-spaced, possibly without a page number.
• Page 2 (First Page of Text): Title centered at the top, page number in the header, first paragraph indented, footnote numbers in the text.
• Middle Pages (3–13): Regular paragraphs with half-inch indents, occasional block quotations, footnotes at the bottom of pages or endnotes at the back.
• Page 14 (Notes, if using endnotes): Centered heading Notes, single-spaced notes with a blank line between them.
• Page 15 (Bibliography): Centered heading Bibliography, alphabetized entries with hanging indents.

When you can picture this flow from start to finish, you’re no longer just memorizing rules—you’re working from living, breathing examples of examples of Chicago style page formatting that mirror what your instructor expects to see.

FAQ: Short, Practical Answers About Chicago Page Formatting

Q: Can you give a quick example of Chicago style margins and spacing?
Yes. A standard example of Chicago style page formatting uses 1-inch margins on all sides, double spacing throughout the paper (including notes and bibliography), and a readable 12-point font like Times New Roman.

Q: Do all Chicago papers need a title page?
Not always. Many student papers in the humanities use a separate title page, but some instructors prefer the title at the top of the first page of text. Follow your assignment sheet or departmental guidelines.

Q: Are there different examples of Chicago style page formatting for author-date versus notes-and-bibliography?
The page layout (margins, spacing, font, headings) is mostly the same. The main difference is how citations appear in the text and what you call the final list of sources (References for author-date, Bibliography for notes-and-bibliography).

Q: How should long URLs look on the page in Chicago style?
Use stable URLs or DOIs when possible. Let your word processor break the line naturally; do not insert manual line breaks or extra spaces. In modern examples of Chicago style page formatting, DOIs are preferred over long web addresses when they’re available.

Q: Where can I see more real examples of Chicago-style pages?
Look at university writing centers and library guides. Many post sample papers that show full pages, not just citation snippets. Sites like Harvard Library, Purdue OWL, and University of Wisconsin–Madison Writing Center all include real examples of Chicago style page formatting that you can model.

If you keep a few of these best examples open while you format your own paper, you’ll quickly move from guessing to confidently matching Chicago’s expectations, line by line and page by page.